Case Study: Laura\'s Sweet Stuff Bakery Laura Schulz has operated Laura\'s Sweet

Question

Case Study: Laura's Sweet Stuff Bakery Laura Schulz has operated Laura's Sweet Stuff Bakery for the past 5 years. By 5:00 a.m. every weekday morning, customers are dropping in both to enjoy the cozy smells and to purchase fresh warm donuts and other goodies to enjoy with their coffee before going to work. After 5 years of this schedule where she began baking by 3:00 a.m., Laura is very tired. Laura has decided to hire an apprentice baker and a cashier to provide early morning counter help. She knows that she must stop treating her bakery as an extension of herself and begin operating a business. She has a friend with an MBA who told her to establish a performance measurement system so that she can tell whether her two new employees are good employees or not. It all seems so complicated. Laura has contacted the local Business School Co-op Program and asked for advice. Your professor assigned you to answer Laura's questions for 20 percent of your grade. When you meet with Laura, she tells you that she will need you to explain with examples related to her bakery "because I'm not good at theory." She presents you with the following questions:

Describe performance, and how does this term relate to Laura’s employees work standards?

Discuss “two measurement systems” Laura can use to establish standards of performance in the bakery.

Explanation / Answer

Answer.

Performance is the completion of a task or set of tasks which are measured against certain standards like accuracy, cost, completeness, and time. It depicts the overall productivity of employees of an organisation in terms of their effective and efficient work. In this case, performance can be related to the Laura's employees work standards, in a way that, she needs to assess her roles and break her job into small measurable tasks so that she can make a good job description and can assign those tasks to the hired individuals. She needs to set standards based on the time, cost and completeness of her job operations so that both the employees will understand their duties and work responsibilities.

Performance measurement system Laura can use to establish standards of performance in the bakery could be cost of quality, profit contribution, and inventory turnover. These measurements will help Laura in all the important aspects of utilising resources optimally, enhancing profitability through effective performance, managing time factor so that all the demand is met with quality and with budgeted costs.

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